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ments fallen upon the mind perfectly flat, like the unbroken continuance of one impression, I doubt whether we should have been able to take any cognizance of the great fact of. recurrence in the midst of change, on which depend the operations of classifying, generalizing, induction, and the rest. In order to impress upon the mind the existence of a class of houses, trees, men, and so on, it seems essential that the recurrence of similarity should give a smart or fillip to the system, quite as much as the transition from action to rest, from light to shade, or from rough to smooth. I do not see how those valuable elements of knowledge that we term generalities, general ideas, principles, could have found a standing in the intellectual consciousness but for the shock of surprise that, in common with change in general, they were able to affect us with. If we were totally indifferent to the recurrence of the same feeling in connection with a number of different objects, the faculty of classifying and generalizing would never to all appearance be manifested in our minds. It is the liveliness of that thrill of surprise, caused by likeness in the company of unlikeness, that rouses us to the perception or impression of recurring properties, and of uniform law among natural things. There is a depth of stupidity exhibited by some individuals, amounting almost to total indifference on this particular; and, in such cases, the power both of generalizing and of comprehending generalities, of forming and of applying analogies, will to that extent be found wanting. Just as a keen sensibility to difference determines the lively cognition of the variety of natural properties, which a blunter sense would confound, so the corresponding sensitiveness to the shock of similarity in diversity, leads to the appreciation and the storing up of nature's generalities and comprehensive unity of plan.

In our definition of mind, we assigned three distinct functions, setting up, as it were, a division instead of giving a definition. The nearest approach that we can make to a Unity in mind, is to treat Volition as a complex fact made up of feeling and bodily acti

vity, and so to reduce the ultimate phenomena to two-Feeling and Intellect. But now we have seen that these cannot be maintained in absolute separation; they are only different aspects of the same phenomenon. In other words, every fact of consciousness has two sides-one Feeling, the other Intellect or Discrimination. Some of our conscious experiences show the side of Feeling in the ascendant, and the side of Discrimination at the minimum; these, by courtesy, we call Feelings. So with the converse. When discrimination is in the ascendant, feeling is in abeyance, and is practically non-existent; in reality it is still there, but in a feeble form. The monad of consciousness is thus a two-sided phenomenon, with capability of indefinite increase on either side; the rise of one being the subsidence of the other. There is not a state that is purely and wholly Feeling,-Feeling, that is, to the entire exclusion of discrimination; and there is not a state that is entirely Discrimination,-Discrimination to the exclusion of feeling.

Mr. Spencer expresses the great antithesis of the Emotional and the Intellectual by Feelings and Relations of Feelings. Something is gained by this wording; but I think the contrast is, on the whole, more pointedly indicated by Feeling and Discrimination. Of course, Discrimination is not the entire Intellect, but it is the groundwork, and is peculiarly suited to be put in contrast to the emotional side of our being, as typified by Pleasure and Pain. The word Relation' has the advantage of being comprehensive, with the disadvantage of being vague and unsuggestive; it is, in fact, the widest term in our vocabulary.

Another mode of expression is to call Feeling the substance, and Intellect the form. The distinction of Matter and Form has been greatly overdone in philosophy; and, in the present instance, we are better without it.

Sensation and Perception.

12. Into the contrast of Sensation and Perception there enter more than one consideration.

In the first place, it involves the distinction between the Emotional and the Intellectual aspects of the Senses. The pleasure or the pain that we have through a sight or a sound, a pleasurable or a painful sensation, is emphatically a sensation as opposed to a perception; it is ultra-sensational, in being not intellectual. Some sensations are mere pleasure or pain, nothing else: such are the feelings of organic life, and the sweet and bitter tastes and odours. All through the Senses, we had to distinguish the pleasures and pains of

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sensation from the discriminative sensibility of each, yielding intellectual or knowledge-giving sensation.

It is under this contrast that Sir W. Hamilton signalizes the inverse proportion of Sensation and Perception; for, with certain qualifications, it is true that Emotion (or Feeling) and Intellect are opposed and are mutually exclusive; the extreme manifestation of the one being more or less incompatible with the other.

13. But this is not all. After much contact with the sensible world, a new situation arises, and a new variety of the consciousness, which stands in need of some explanation. When a child experiences for the first time the sensation of scarlet, there is nothing but the sensibility of a new impression, more or less intense, according to the intensity of the object, and the susceptibility of the mind. It is very difficult for us to realize or to define this original shock, our position in mature life being totally altered. It is the rarest thing for us then to come under a radically new impression, and we can only, by the help of imperfect analogies, form an approximate conception of what happens at the first shock of a discriminative sensation. The process of engraining these impressions on the mind after repetition, gives to subsequent sensations a character quite different from what belonged to the first. The second shock of scarlet, if it stood alone, would doubtless resemble the preceding; but such is the nature of the mind that the new shock will not stand alone, but restores the notion, or idea, or trace that survived the other. The sensation is no longer the primitive surprise, but the coalition of a present shock with all that remains of the previous occasions. Hence, when we see, or hear, or touch, or move, what comes before us is really contributed more by the mind itself than by the object present. The consciousness has three concurring elements-the new shock, the flash of agreement. with the sum total of the past, and the feeling of that past as revived in the present. In truth, the new sensation is apt to be entirely overriden by the old; and, in place of discriminating by virtue of our susceptibility to what is charac

teristic in it, our discrimination follows another course. For example, if I have before me two shades of colour, instead of feeling the difference exactly as I am struck at the moment, my judgment resorts to the roundabout process of first identifying each with some reiterated series of past impressions; and, there being two sum-totals in my mind, the difference that I feel is between those totals. If I make a mistake, it may be attributed, not so much to a wrong act of discrimination, as to a wrong act of identification. It is as if I could judge between two substances on the chemist's table, only by first finding out, by an effort of identification, which drawer or which bottle each belonged to; I should then judge, not by comparing the specimens, but by comparing the drawers, or bottles containing the entire stock of each. If I made a wrong identification to begin with, my conclusion would be sure to be wrong; while, the similarity being accurate, so would be the difference. All sensations, therefore, after the first of each kind, involve a flash of recovery from the past, which is what really determines their character. The present shock is simply made use of as a means of reviving some one of the past shocks in preference to all the others; the new impression of scarlet is in itself almost insignificant, serving only as the medium of resuscitating the cerebral condition. resulting from the united force of all the previous scarlets. If, by some temporary hallucination, a scarlet were to bring up the impression of ultramarine blue, the mind would really be possessed with blue, while the eyes were fixed upon scarlet; just as, in putting an account upon a wrong file, we lose sight of the features of the account itself, and declare its character according to the file where it is. Sensation thus calls into operation the two great intellectual laws, in addition to the primitive sensibility of difference. The endurance of the impression after the original is gone, is owing to the plastic power set forth under the law of contiguity. The power of the new shock, to bring back the trace of the first, is a genuine exercise of the power of similarity. When we consider ourselves as performing the

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most ordinary act of seeing, or hearing, we are bringing into play those very functions of the intellect that distinguish its highest developments.

This process gives birth to bad observation and illusion. An object imperfectly caught by the eye suggests some previous image, which image once suggested persists by its natural hold, and, perhaps also, by the aid of emotion. The present appearance is thus completely overlaid, and we continue misinterpreting, that is, miscomparing it, until something happens to heighten the influence of the present, and abate the pressure of the past.*

14. The more that sensation involves cognitive or intellectual processes, the more liable is it to be designated Perception. Thus, in sensation, we are object and subject by turns. We are object when attending to the form and magnitude of a conflagration; we are subject when we give way to the emotional effect of the luminous blaze. Now, although the name Sensation is used for both states, Perception is the better word for the object attitude.

Again, what has just been said regarding the intervention of intellectual forces in sensation, indicates the same tendency. Supposing the first impression of scarlet is called a sensation, the combined trace of thirty impressions, revived in the presentation of the thirty-first, would be a perception, as being something more than the effect strictly due to the present

The operation is happily expressed by Coleridge, in the following quotation given by Mr. Venn in his 'Hulsean Lectures', p. 15.

"In aid of the present case, I will only remark, that it would appear incredible to persons not accustomed to these subtle notices of self-observation, what small and remote resemblances, what mere hints of likeness from some real external object, especially if the shape be aided by colour, will suffice to make a vivid thought consubstantiate with the real object, and derive from it an outward perceptibility. Even when we are broad awake, if we are in anxious expectation, how often will not the most confused sounds of nature be heard by us as articulate sounds? For instance, the babbling of a brook will appear for a moment the voice of a friend for whom we are waiting, calling out our own names." Coleridge's Friend, I. 189. The principle is there applied in a very interesting way to account for Luther's vision of the devil in the tower at Wartburg.